Immigration Is A Top Issue For Voters

Immigration issues are getting traction from voters in the GOP presidential primary, surprising some in Washington who thought the sagging economy would overshadow it and other topics.

GOP presidential hopefuls remain hesitant to talk about it.

“I think the candidates are beginning to wake up,” says Bob Dane, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), adding that the most recent debates have elicited “more clarity” from the Republican candidates on the immigration issue.

“If you ask people their top priorities, they’re going to say jobs, wages, the economy,” Roy Beck of Numbers USA tells USA Today.

“But what a lot of poll readers don’t understand is that immigration is intertwined with those economic issues for a lot of Americans. That’s why it keeps popping up.”

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has distinguished himself from the candidates with a specific solution for the problem of what to do about the 11-14 million illegal immigrants now here, advocating for those who’ve lived in this country 25 years or more to be allowed to stay.

But what to do about the illegal immigrants now living here is not the most important question to be asked of the candidates, according to Dane. The key question, he said, is: “Will you enforce the laws of the land if you become president?”

Dane says President Obama is now pushing a “back-door amnesty” through a series of memos issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that articulate broader and broader classes of citizens who should be deported.

The policy that has taken shape through these memos, most of them released just this year, has been that only those illegal immigrants who have committed felonies are being deported. All others, including those who have been turned over to ICE by law enforcement officers in Arizona under that state’s new law, are being released.

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